Kristen McDonald Rivet: FEMA Is ‘Dying Under A Cumbersome Bureaucracy’

2 days ago

During a House Transportation Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-MI) spoke in support of reforming the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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00:00recognize the gentlelady from Michigan, McDonald Revit, for five minutes for questions.

00:05Thank you very much. I want to start just by thanking Chairman Perry and Ranking Member Stanton

00:11for holding this hearing on what seems to be a bipartisan level of frustration.

00:17I represent a community in Michigan, Midland, Michigan, that five years ago

00:25saw multiple dams fail after heavy rainfall. In fact, I personally ran one of the evacuation

00:32centers. It caused massive flooding and water levels reaching as high as 35 feet above normal

00:39levels. Thankfully, no one died in that, which I actually just think is a miracle.

00:45But it resulted in over $200 million in damages. And not only did it decimate our infrastructure

00:51like our roads and bridges, it destroyed homes that families had lived in for generations,

00:56and small businesses that families had dedicated their entire lives to.

01:01So here we sit five years later. Ms. Lauder, I hear your story, and it just resonated so

01:07deeply with me. It is a continuous struggle, a continuing struggle, in order to resolve the

01:17pieces that FEMA came in to help. But what we see over and over again, like multiple

01:25federal programs, is that the intent of FEMA and the amazing people who work there is dying

01:33under a cumbersome bureaucracy that is so frustrating, particularly for local people

01:38who don't have the experience of dealing with big federal bureaucracies and are just at the

01:43point of giving up. Our local communities are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars,

01:47which is nothing in a federal budget, but everything in a local budget.

01:53So I do want to just say that I understand the frustration. But what I'm not understanding is the

02:01suggested remedy, which is a suggested elimination of FEMA, and also the suggestion

02:10that this actually can be solved at a local level if states and locals would just budget

02:15more appropriately, which, having been a state senator on the Appropriations Committee, I can

02:20tell you states cannot handle this just by budgeting, handling this on their own. And in

02:28particular, when we're simultaneously considering extensive cuts, including $880 billion from our

02:34Medicaid program. I mean, it just defies common sense. But I do think we have to do something,

02:40because we can't tolerate this. And my local community still sits there and waits. And I hope

02:45it doesn't take five years for you. But I hear you, Mr. Curry, when you were talking about, okay,

02:50what can we do? We know that block granting is also a very difficult solution, because most

02:59federal block grants, again, as a state appropriator, come with burdens, like incredibly complex and

03:05burdensome regulations. But you said, let's address the root causes. Everything isn't broken.

03:10But I didn't hear you say what those root causes are, and I would love to hear that.

03:13Sure. Let me take the grant issue. And so a lot has been talked about recently, about

03:20switching FEMA to a block grant. I'm not so much just concerned with the name of the grant. A block

03:25grant just means, theoretically, that you provide all the funding up front, and the state manages

03:30instead of the federal government holding the money and doling it out slowly, which is what

03:35the FEMA process is. The root cause is, is that the process is too complicated, and there's too

03:42many rules and overlapping requirements and inconsistency for the years that go on with

03:47recovery. Turnover and staffing plays into this, too, and different cultural changes at FEMA. So

03:55the problem is, is that you have an infrastructure project that could take 10 to 15 years to

03:59rebuild. And all throughout there, there's cost changes, and you have to go back and forth to the

04:03federal government. It's very, very confusing. I think what we're trying to do is we want to

04:10come up with something where the federal government still provides the support that the states will

04:15never be able to come up with, like you said. But it does so in a way that they provide it to the

04:21state where there's flexibility, but there's still the appropriate oversight and controls. And that's

04:25the balance you're trying to strike. With block granting, you give up some of the control at the

04:30federal level and the oversight, but you give the states more flexibility. But if you don't design

04:35the block... I'm aware of my time. I just want to say, in your experience, and I know this is a bit

04:39of an unfair question, but have you ever seen a federal-to-state block grant that did not come

04:46with its own set of rules and overlapping requirements? It does, but we have to build it

04:51better in this case. So, for example, with the community development block grant, disaster

04:56recovery, one of the challenges with that is that you try to build the whole program up front and

05:01then turn it over to the states, and that takes too long. So the money doesn't get there quick

05:05enough. We have to build this system and the rules and requirements up front, get the states up to

05:10speed on it, get everyone familiar with the process, build their system so they can manage

05:14this amount of money so it can be turned over much quicker. And that's very possible to do.

Kristen McDonald Rivet: FEMA Is ‘Dying Under A Cumbersome Bureaucracy’

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